Renting out a time share is NOT an investment!
Friday, February 22, 2008 | Jeremy T. (jetabor) Is this Spam?A friend of mine dragged me along to a time share presentation. Before I even left the house I already knew I wasn't going to buy anything, but they were offering free doughnuts, so I was there! They, of course, gave the usual 90 minute schpeal about how they offer the best deals on time shares anywhere, and how we’ll "save" so much money by taking our vacations through them. And of course, if we ever wanted to sell our time share, we could do so, generally at a huge profit to us.
To be honest I didn’t pay all that much attention as I was busy cramming my face with these tasty little custard treats! However, when the first presentation was over and they took us aside to figure out if we were going to purchase a time share, my friend (to protect his identity, we’ll refer to him as James) started getting all excited and definitely gave the guy the impression that we were going to buy something. James was convinced that we could rent this "investment" out to friends of ours and make a killing! Now, I started getting worried because I had no intention of buying anything like this, especially going 50/50 with James. This was a guy who, from what I’d seen, isn’t the most financially responsible person out there - he typically opens up a credit card every time he gets an offer in the mail, and is constantly shifting balances to and from cards. I don’t know how he planned on coming up with the $2000 down payment that was needed, but I knew is that I didn’t want any part of it. Fortunately, I was able to easily let him down by telling him that I couldn’t make any big financial decisions like this without my wife present. (Which is more than an excuse, it’s actually very true!) James and I are still friends, but I’ll be sure not to attend any more time share presentations with him!
The moral of the story is that if someone is pressuring you into buying something, whether it be a time share, a new car, or whatever, try walk away that day to think it over. If the good deal you were going to get if you bought that day goes up 50%, then it probably wasn’t a very good deal to begin with.
